She patted my arm fondly. “There’ll be plenty of time for us to chat later. I believe your young man planned this surprise very carefully.”
I was shocked to say the least, but my stare swung to a smug Tarik. “There’s no soiree, is there?” My question was rhetorical. “How did you know—?”
“Your mother arranged it, but this isn’t all of the surprise. Come on.” He took my arm and led my numb body to the back garden of the Herschel home.
Oh, my giddy stars…
All the blood felt like it was leaving my body in a rush as I stared up and up and up at the largest telescope in the world, built by Miss Herschel’s brother, William, and commissioned by the late king for over four thousand pounds. The tube was fortyfeet long and surrounded by conical-shaped wooden scaffolding. The mirror alone was forty-eight inches in diameter. I openly gaped, not even caring that my mouth was hanging open.
Tarik tugged gently, and I followed in a daze. “Are we going up there?” I asked in a breathy voice, staring at the viewing platform near the upper end.
“Of course we are.”
I was even more breathless by the time we stood on the platform, the sky above us littered with stars, the moon just rising to the east. I was about to look through the personal telescope built by the man who discovered the first new planet since ancient times. The moment was surreal. “What is it pointed at?” I murmured.
“Look,” Tarik said.
I put my eye to the finder and gasped at what appeared to be an indistinct smear on the velvet background of stars. “Is that…acomet?” I tuned the focus and stared in rapt delight at the hazy nucleus with a glowing tail that reached out behind it, almost like a bluish plume. It was the most glorious thing I had ever seen. “Which one is that? What’s it called?”
“It doesn’t have a name yet. I was cataloguing celestial bodies to have a few for you to look at with your telescope when I detected a faint luminescence that seemed to have a noticeable motion near Cassiopeia, unlike the fixed stars around it. I spoke to Mr. Pond at the Royal Observatory, and it is indeed a comet. I observed and tracked it for a while, but I wanted the discovery to be ours. I was thinking we could use your middle name to identify it.”
“My middle name?” I asked, gaping at him while my brain tried to process the unbelievable information that this was anundiscoveredcomet. “Don’t you want to use yours? You saw it first.”
“I want to share the discovery with you.” He shrugged, a flush cresting his cheekbones. I couldn’t help the warmth that spread through me. “Mine is Étienne, by the way.”
It was such a French name, and I adored the way it rolled off his tongue. “My middle name is Zhenyi, after the Chinese scientist. She was a famous mathematician and astronomer who proved the movement of the equinoxes and wrote about lunar eclipses.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “Very well, we shall name her C/1820 X1 Zhenyi-Étienne and send our observations off to the Royal Society.”
I stared at the comet again, noticing that it had moved slightly.Astonishing!
“I have one more surprise,” Tarik said softly.
I straightened with a laugh. “I don’t think I can take much more.”
He pointed to the lower platform, where, to my shock, I saw the telescope I had built resting on its very small frame. I pursed my lips as he led me down to it. “I think gazing through that will be a disappointment after the Great Forty-Foot.”
“It’s yours. You built it. It should never feel less than.”
Such a sweet thing to say, but wrong, nonetheless. I moved to the eyepiece and maneuvered the tube in the direction of the comet. I frowned. The focus seemed to be off—the clarity wouldnot be the same as the previous telescope, but since the comet was visible with the naked eye, it should be more than a fuzzy, odd-shaped white blob.
“Something’s wrong,” I began, lifting my head, only to see Tarik standing at the other end of the tube. “What are you doing? You’re blocking my—”
My words cut off abruptly as I noticed what he was holding up in front of the telescope.
A ring…a rose-cut diamond cluster ring.
Anengagementring.
“Tarik?” I wheezed.
His eyes shone with so much emotion that my knees nearly buckled. “Lady Rosalin, I’m certain you already know that my heart is yours. We are binary stars, forever destined to be gravitationally bound in orbit around each other. You are my other half; the girl who makes me feel seen and cherished and present.” He smiled as tears of joy sprang from my eyes. “You must know I love you. Would you grace me with the honor of giving me your hand in marriage?”
I couldn’t speak.
“Say yes and put the poor sap out of his misery!” someone shouted from far below us, and I glanced down, sobs clogging my throat at the sight of a small crowd gathered there.
“Blake!” Zia squawked. “Don’t ruin their moment, you brainless clod!”
